Nothing matches the shrill accusation that an assertion is not “fair and balanced.” Make a claim. Someone hollers “not fair and balanced” from the wings, and an opposing, contradictory theory, and the evidence for it, spring into existence. Poof. The surest thing in the universe- a punched return ticket on the Faith Train.

This is how the argument seems to work. No statement, opinion or fact can be credible, unless it is accompanied by the “other side of the controversy-“ a contradictory “fact.” Any point of view can be summarily dismissed unless it is accompanied by its negation: the credential of a balancing, opposing point of view.

No simply stated assertion can be valid.

But let’s face it. Facts aren’t each packaged with a bonus self-contradiction. Opinions don’t come with symmetrical counter-arguments attached. The worst ones certainly don’t. The bizarre utterances of Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck and their ilk are inflammatory, irresponsible and unsupportable. They do not politely supply opposing views.

We know that this apparent nonsense derails sensible conversation. We cannot quite make out why. We fumble with the baffling power this “fair and balanced” thing has in the minds of those who use it. This does more sinister damage than first appears. With some analysis we can see how it works. We can resist and reclaim.

The accusation that opinions or assertions are not “fair and balanced” does nothing (really) to discredit them. It does not constitute a counterargument. It isn’t even an argument. It certainly isn’t evidence. It is a personal attack on the person making it  – ad hominem– for being unfair and unbalanced. It pretends to discredit their legitimacy or authority or integrity. It contemptuously dismisses their standing to make an assertion or have an opinion.

We hear a commonplace aphorism about what makes a claim or a theory “scientific:”

To be scientific, assertions or theories are subject in principle to the possibility of disproof: that there is conceivable evidence that would contradict them.

(Karl Popper and provenance of theory of Falsifiability: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability)

Sometimes we hear this as a definition of science itself. It does have the ring of a “theory.” This alone doesn’t appear to mean much or do much harm in our culture wars. Maybe it confers some vague middle-brow legitimacy. It does in some trivial sense help to give meaning to the term “science” within the narrow box-canyon of unprovable, faith based beliefs. But it is not clear that we need it.

We often hear this little trope –this “theory” – foreshortened: The scientific is disprovable. This foreshortening is an error. To say that the scientific is disprovable is utterly different from the theory we attribute to Popper and Kuhn. It has proved to be a very damaging linguistic mutilation. It seems like a harmless (if mindless) trope, until we examine how it engenders murky, destructive beliefs that do startling damage.

We invite slippage and imprecision in the usage of the term “disprovable.” Can “disprovable” here mean “can be disproved?” Can it mean “disproved?” Uh-oh. “Scientific” theories are disprovable. Science Philosophers say so.” That means there is evidence that disproves them.

Anti-science polemic relies on a popular vulnerability to the mistaken idea that anything considered scientific has evidence that contradicts it.  Incredible. A “thing” is only eligible to be true if it is equally, symmetrically, not true! Any “theory,” any “evidence-based” claim, automatically manifests an opposing “anti-claim.” This will be in the form of a belief. It will be undetectable, undisprovable and unprovable. Like anti-matter and anti-gravity, this is anti-science. Yet it will convey a veil of scientific validity. Think this is crazy? Go ask someone at the local evangelical church.

It isn’t enough that recruiting scientific validity for an assertion invents an opposing belief. In the popular imagination, it implies that there is –equally scientific–  evidence to support that belief, and that this fictive evidence disproves the original claim. Under the rubric of… science!

Parenthetically, we know that evidence that contradicts (or disproves) a proposition does not affirmatively prove anything. But there is a popular belief that disproving or discrediting a theory or proposition somehow proves that a contradictory or opposing explanation exists and is true. 

This series of (in)convolutions is a mutilated, logical horror. It is muddled and fallacious enough to be difficult to disentangle. We are temporarily stunned and baffled by tautological shock-and-awe. Suddenly the rubric of science seems to somehow validate blurry, unstated claims that are overtly anti-science. We are wordless. We wonder why those who intone the magic words – fair and balanced– look at us, wordlessly, with such triumphant defiance. It is because we haven’t imagined the magnitude of the logical blunders that fly before our eyes.

We do get a useful inversion or (commutative operation) from our little “definition,” though. This is of more value to genuine thoughtful inquiry. It seems to be the real point. It goes beyond identifying what are credible speculations and claims about the world, and significantly, helps us see what are not:

Assertions for which there is no conceivable evidence that might contradict them are not regarded as scientific.

We seem to allow, without questioning, the following distorting simplification:

There is no conceivable (“scientific”) evidence that might support them. And this seems to be accepted as amounting to the same thing: Assertions for which there is no imaginable evidence are not regarded as scientific. There isn’t, and can’t be, any such evidence. Hence, they are not “scientific.” They are beliefs, taken on faith, only.

We are vulnerable to another foreshortening, too. We truncate: “faith-based beliefs are not subject to evidence that might disprove them” becomes “faith-based beliefs are not subject to disproof.” Popular usage interprets this as “faith-based beliefs cannot be disproved.” Say that again. Faith-based beliefs can’t be disproved. What have we done? If this strains credulity, pose this question at tea-bagging soiree and see how people really unleash the hunt for coherence.

This (inadvertent?) series of fallacies and errors distracts us from reasoning. We have gotten this far without remarking the obvious fact that scientific “theories” (like evolution and human causation for climate change) regarded as credible- not to say “true-” just do not have meaningful evidence that contradicts them.

“Rules For Axioms: I. Not to omit any necessary principle without asking whether it is admitted, however clear and evident it may be. II. Not to demand, in axioms, any but things that are perfectly evident in themselves.”

Blaise Pascal: Thoughts, Letters and Minor Works: Part 48 Harvard Classics. Blaise Pascal and Charles W. Eliot. F.F.  Collier New York: 1910 pp. 413

“Then there’s the problem of “balance” – the idea that reporters must give roughly equal space to two different “sides” of a controversy. When applied to science, especially in politicized areas, this media norm becomes extremely problematic. Should journalists really grant equal time to the small band of scientists who deny the causal relationship between HIV and AIDS when the vast majority of researchers accept the connection between the two? Should they split column space between the few remaining global warming “skeptics” and the scientific experts who affirm the phenomenon’s human causation? Again, experienced science journalists will know best how to cover such stories and will be aware of the scientific community’s very justifiable abhorrence of unthinking “balance.””

Chris Mooney & Sheril Kirschenbaum: “Unpopular Science”. The Nation (August 17, 2009 ed.). (Our emphasis.) http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090817/mooney_kirshenbaum

We know from clinical observation that right-wing, conservative “faith” operatives are anti-science. And to what purpose? They are intolerant of the “evidence-based” pursuit of public policy. Who profits by this? They resist the admission and consideration of factual knowledge and critical analysis into our public conversations about how we are to conduct ourselves. The Faith Card.

We acknowledge that right-wing doctrine is anti-science. We predictably foreshorten this to “faith is anti-science.” Is faith per se anti-science? I have no idea. How could I, really? I don’t believe I am making claims based on faith. I guess your faiths are anti-science if you say they are. Faiths are specific, particular and not “per se.” There is no recognizable category of as-yet formed faiths for which we can apply logical operators like “anti-science.” Maybe we should discipline ourselves to make statements only about specific, articulable beliefs or “faiths.” Faith is a noun. Do you have faith? Do you have cheeses?

We allow another unthinking inversion (commutation), this time of the trope “faith is anti-science.” We inadvertently give birth to another unfortunate, bastard linguistic error: “science is anti-faith.” Allowing this illogical imposture into the right-wing play-book has invited all sorts of mental mayhem.

If we set aside uncertain arguments about scientific “methods,” the body of science is nothing more (or less) than the accumulation of sensibly agreeable observations about reality. The body of physical science isn’t anti-faith. The body of social science is clear:

It is overwhelmingly evident that organized faith does staggering harm. Not only because it opposes science in public policy.  Not only because it is instrumental in power and oppression. Organized religion produces wholesale injustice and violence.

Beliefs for which we cannot imagine any evidence are a very special, very particular class of claim. They differ fundamentally from observations of reality. We are tricked into mistaking that they merit recognition and equal footing with the reasoned, the rational, the scientific –with claims that are within the ambit of observable evidence and actual theories. They do not. We are fooled into giving them some kind of “legitimacy through association.” They do not have similar gravity, or moral weight, or intellectual standing.

Let’s tally the damage we have done to sensible discourse.

Science and the scientific are categorically maligned as inherently contradictory and self-disproving. This disdains and dismisses all rational, logical discourse, not to mention those zany philosophers, as ridiculous, naïve and stupidly self-contradictory. Reasoned dialogue is mangled and reduced to nonsensical rubble. We can dismiss science itself.

This kind of malicious dishonesty mocks intellectual and logical integrity. No wonder we are confused.

We are obliged to summarily reject right-wing claims to recourse to “logic” or “reason” or “evidence,” or “science,” or, for god’s sake, “truth. They gave up any such claims too long ago for us to brook that bullshit. A reasoned response is an undignified disservice to mental –and moral– integrity. If we analyze with this kind of care, we can rehabilitate for ourselves the proper usage of the word “theory” from those who would appropriate and contaminate it. We can reclaim for serious conversation the terms “proofs” and “proved.”

By all means. Take seriously all ideas that claim to truth, meaning, and mere usefulness. Examine them rationally and with reason. Subject them to skepticism, counter-evidence and to possible disproof. Feel free –intellectually free– to discredit them.

But dismiss, without evidence, apology or justification, that which is presented without evidence. (Provide citation.) Do not dignify as “controversy” the shrill assaults of bitter, acquisitive extremists who would discard what we know.

So many things are just… true. And so many things are just… uncontroversial. And so many things are just… preposterous. Give no credence to unfounded claims to controversy. The unfounded belief and the reasoned, supported and “evidence-based” argument do not have the same standing. Disregard refractory, schizoid and insane demands that you be “fair and balanced.”  As we have seen, they do more harm than immediately appears. Let’s not be insane.

(end)

Saturday, 27 March 2009

“One of the researches most urgently needed is into the whole problem of compromise and noncompromise. I am dangerously and mistakenly much against compromise: “my kind never gets anything done.”  The (self-styled) “Realists” are quite as dangerously ready to compromise. They seem never sufficiently aware of the danger; they much to quickly and easily respect the compromise and come to rest in it. I would suppose that nothing is necessarily wrong with compromise in itself, except that those who are easy enough to make it are easy enough to relax into and accept it, and that it thus inevitably becomes fatal.  Or more nearly, the essence of the trouble is that compromise is held to be a virtue itself.”

James Agee: From Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Cited in Robert Coles: Teaching Stories. Modern Library, New York: 2004. Pp. 233.

Centrism may not really exist. Moderation may be an illusion.  Please consider this premise for the moment.

Maybe there is a “center.” While you read our argument, please keep in mind our openness to this proposition. Maybe you are a scholar and a leader in the domain of that “center.” It may exist. Maybe there are several! There may be substantial, reasoned and reasonable policy positions, ethically supported and credible, somewhere around the region of space we fondly and fuzzily call “the Center.” 

We, the Editors, are willing to have this whole line of inquiry be completely wrong. Divisive, inflammatory and offensive, even. Oh, yeah. But we ask you to consider the following as a radical thought experiment. As always, our postulate is not a solution. We theorize not to conclude anything, but to deepen the question and invite the conversation. (We urge you to read our Essay entitled HYPOCRISY IS BAD: A deliberate, Numbing Assault On Our Public Conversation and dated 05 November 2008 at  http://www.takebackourlanguage.com/blog/?p=904 ).

So please indulge us for a moment. We apologize for some weak geographical metaphors, and we ask you to consider this proposition:

Centrism may not really exist. At any “center,” maybe there is no substantial policy, no ethically supportable stance, no passionately held and shared belief (or indeed belief of any kind). Or even a valid opinion. Just observing reality from a place can only be fuzzy, soft, incorrect and epistemologically incomplete.

“The real power of junk thought lies in its status as a centrist phenomenon, fueled by the American credo of tolerance that places all opinions on an equal footing and makes little effort to separate fact from opinion.”

Susan Jacoby, The Age Of American Unreason: Pp 211

Is it an illusion that there is anything at any sort of “center” that is not vacuous?

There really is no “place” in this region of the map. There is no “center” that can be reliably found and identified by any honest geography, or any honest geographer.

At the empty space at the “center” of our peculiar cartographic discourse there is really only fear and directionless immobility: inertia.

There is something at this certain “Center,” but it is not opinion, policy, ethical conviction, or shared belief. It is nothing of the kind. This something is not without “gravity.” It is fact extremely dense! It is like a black hole of Infinite Ignorance, from which no meaning and communication can escape. (Please see our Essay entitled EXTREMISM IS SAFE: How Is Radical Extremism reassuring? and dated September 5, 2008 at http://www.takebackourlanguage.com/blog/?p=174 ).

It is a kind of perch where the unsure, insecure and ignorant find a craven, sanctimonious pulpit from which to chortle and dismiss.

Have we have simply lost any shared clarity of language about a real, responsible “center” of policy positions and ethical substance? Maybe this is nothing more than a semantic issue, or a matter of confused and uncertain definitions. Has it become confusing and opaque due to imprecision? Intellectual sloppiness? Failure to consult our dictionaries?

We assert that if so, this is in itself a bad thing. At best things are certainly muddied and blurred by confusion. Imprecise, ambiguous usages are simply incorrect. We owe it to ourselves, and to one another, to commit ourselves to certain, precise and respectful use of language.

The richer, more nuanced and multi-dimensional our dialogue is, the more understanding we will share. Multiple meanings and metaphor add immeasurably to the art of communication.  Language is a living thing. Do we kill it by disrespecting its whole, ineffable existence? Believe us; we (the Editors) are social and anthropological radicals. A look around this website should convince you that we strive to be anything but dogmatic stiflers of language.

To be sure, the fearsome matters before us are complex, contradictory and multi-dimensional. Do we imagine we are simply being respectful of cultural and ethical difference? Do we accept another’s unique usage of terms because of her “unique social position, experience and subjectivity?” No. Mutual respect for cultural and personal difference does not allow us to simply invent our own language from our respective “experiences.” It is dishonest and destructive. We can only recover intellectual honesty, and the means to understand one another truly, with intellectual rigor about our meanings.

“Rereading Hofstadter at the end of the nineties, I was struck by the old-fashioned fairness of his scholarship- not the bogus “objectivity” or bland centrism that always locates truth equidistant from two points, but a serious attempt to engage the arguments of opponents and acknowledge evidence that runs contrary to one’s own biases.”

Susan Jacoby: The Age Of American Unreason: pp. xvi

Confusion and blurring may reflect more an intellectual sloppiness than a moral weakness- but we believe that both do us great harm. Mutual respect requires us to commit to complete, mutual integrity and shared, dogged pursuit of what we -and our words- truly “mean.” To fail is a moral weakness.

Moral weakness exposes us to genuine peril, though. We detect a theft of our language-  abstruse and dishonest: a hijack of  our public conversation. We witness the discursive appropriation of power through the appropriation of language and discourse. Done by “Blue Dog” Democrats, yes? Heinous! Grave injury is done to shared meaning, real ethical commitments, and convictions. Honest public conversation is suffocated by the instruments of power and identity. The true natures of ideas (and of ideological conflicts) are trivialized and debased.

But! Maybe worse yet: maybe the “center” is an epistemological falsity, a tautological error and a failure of reason. Under cover of smug righteousness, it mesmerizes us, and confounds and paralyzes serious contemplation of matters of ethical gravity. 

“Moreover, the much lionized American centrists, sometimes known as moderates, are in no way immune to the overwhelming pull of belief systems that treat evidence as a tiresome stumbling-block to deeper, instinctive “ways of knowing.”"

Susan Jacoby, The Age Of America Unreason:___ (***) Pp 211

Okay. Maybe you are not religious, but not antireligionist. (And not an activist.) Maybe you are uncomfortable with the consequences of religious extremism. Or  hey- maybe you are an anti-religionist. More power to you.

Maybe you are uncomfortable about violence, or dislike it.  Or maybe you are passionately, committedly opposed to it, and you abhor violence by extremists— from any of the cardinal points of extremism. Or maybe you are actively anti-violent. More power to you.

But maybe you are just uncomfortable with conflict. You just don’t like -or don’t engage in- shrill, polarizing conflict.

Maybe you passionately, devotedly oppose hate and intolerance. Hurray. But maybe you are just not that angry with, or hateful toward, others. 

Maybe you are uncomfortable about some of what “extremists” and “extremism” produce. Or maybe you have complete conviction about the unethical and moral wrongs that some extremisms produce.

Maybe you are just- UNCOMFORTABLE. But not an activist.

But does this discomfort distract and obstruct us from having real convictions about what might discomfit us most? Discomfort may push you away from positions of real conviction- about racism, about sexuality, about violence. This is not neutrality, or even reason. Often, it is not even very complicated.

Our greatest discomfort should be at failed convictions, and failed resistance to racism, oppression and violence of all sorts. We should honor, and embrace, this sort of discomfort.

Only a strongly polarized moral compass will allow us to navigate surely.

Maybe you are uncomfortable about men having sex with other men, or women having sex with other women. But… maybe you are anti-gay.

Or maybe you just don’t want to have sex with other men, or women. Maybe you’re just altogether a bit uncomfortable about sex. Shouldn’t we be? It’s fun, but it is really quite an abyss, isn’t it? But maybe you are truly intolerant.

Maybe you are uncomfortable about wholesale violence undertaken abroad by your country. Maybe you are uncomfortable -but just a bit- that it is undertaken in your name.  Maybe you are also uncomfortable with people openly opposing and condemning that violence. You may be afraid to resist it yourself. You may be uncomfortable that you may be a victim of violence. But… maybe you are an ultarnationalist warmonger and advocate, nay embrace it. We don’t know.

Maybe you are uncomfortable about black people starving in Africa, and the oppression and killing there. Maybe you are uncomfortable about black people approaching your car. Maybe you are racist, and oppose the enfranchisement of others. Dunno.

Does discomfort ”pull” you diametrically into the center of a spectrum of beliefs? No. This is repulsion, not attraction. There is nothing “attractive” about it. The only thing “attractive” about the center is that the instinctively craven feel more secure when surrounded by the like-minded (-or the similarly un-minded). The “center” o(of a herd) is a matter of perceived reproductive advantage (for those of us who “believe” in evolution). There is an evolutionarily conferred reduction in the statistical likelihood that one will be eaten- especially by one’s own kind. (Please see our Essay on herd-opinioning, titled “EXTREMISM IS SAFE: How Is Radical Extremism Reassuring?” and dated 05 September 2008 (http://www.takebackourlanguage.com/blog/?p=174 . It is quite funny).

Could the following be true? If you are a “centrist:

This is not pallid neutrality.

You are not Neutral.

You are not Sober. 

You are not Responsible.

You are not Moral.

You are not “Moderate.”

You are not a “Centrist.”

You are not in the “Center” of anything.

You are Nowheresville, man.

You are not in a safe, secure and comfortable place.

You are not a political “actor,” or an “actor” in the world at all. You are not an “agent” and you are not a civic participant.

Centrism and moderation are not a moral stance.

Maybe there is no such thing as responsible moderation.

Try this: If you are a “centrist:”

You are at the margin.

You are at the sideline.

You are “on the bubble.”

You are at the junction of Apathy, Inaction and Passivity.

But you are not safe. You are at risk. You are in danger. You expose us all to extremisms.

You are next.

This is the absence of a moral or ethical stance.

You have an absence of conviction.

An absence of belief.

Maybe this is not really the opposite of taking a stance. That would be taking a stance, wouldn’t it? Maybe it isn’t Anti-stance. But it is an absence of stance, a failure of stance. It may not be the opposite of conviction, but it is an absence or failure of conviction. Not anti-conviction but a-conviction.  It may not be opposed to morals and mores, but it may be a-moral. Actually, it is anything but amoral. We assert that it is immoral, especially because it disguises itself as principalled and gives protective cover to evil. That is not amoral, is it? But let’s not lose sight: does it do wholesale damage to the operations of morals and mores in the world? Does it pretend to morality? Does it do violence to shared meaning, and to language itself?

Maybe you just don’t give a shit. You are still not a “centrist.”

But it may be that these are really horrible failures. Our proposition is that to fail to believe, to commit and to act may in fact be immoral. It may admit and abet the spread of extremisms and destruction. When there is nothing moderate about the beliefs and practices (and horrors) that you oppose, how can you be a “moderate?”

Is there no such thing as responsible moderation?

We argue that what we describe here far worse than irresponsible. Worse than merely sanctimonious, self-righteous and craven.

“Centrism” paints itself as reasoned, sound, grounded, and pragmatic. A sympathetic, accepting understanding of multiple dimensions and nuanced perspectives. It propounds to be knowledgeable and tolerant and honoring -perhaps embracing- of positions that it situates as, well, extreme. Relative to itself.

“Moderation” may seek to materialize and validate “solid” ground simply by finding a sort of “middle” ground among competing claims and calling it some sort of “common” ground. It is defined, manifested, and located in the world only by the coordinates of the “grounds” around it, however unfounded and spurious the claims thereto may be. It is “ungrounded,” and unfounded in the way that colonies and settlements may be unfounded.

It then (perfidiously) presumes to define all else, all that lies around it as far as the eye can see, as “extreme.” It paints all that is “extreme” as fundamentally immature. As lacking its multi-perspectival maturity.

Here: the premise is false that “centrism” is a measured, calculated response to real, complex and consequential situations. It is not measured, calculated or real. By positing other positions as extreme, relative to itself, IT POSITS EXACTLY NOTHING. It is vacuous.

Without inherent substance, “moderation” nonetheless endorses -even requires- the rejection, without serious consideration, analysis or understanding, of anything that another extremist might call “extreme.” 

“…With a renewed esteem, it may be the scholarly equivalent of the general public’s weariness with ideological polarizations that has sanctioned not only the demonization of opponents but the trivialization of all opposing positions.”

Susan Jacoby, The Age Of American Unreason: Pp xvi

It endorses the rejection of … -everything. Every conviction, every conclusion, every assertion and every truth. In fact, as a false epistemology, it requires the negation of every real (grounded) position or epistemological stance that matters.

It cloaks such rejection and intolerance in smug sanctimoniousness.

It glorifies knuckleheaded ignorance. More, it makes ignorance more powerful than reason or ethical conviction or truth. It evades them, trivializes them, infantilizes them and then eradicates them.

“As both dumbness and smartness are defined downward -among intellectuals and nonintellectuals alike- it becomes much easier to convince people of the validity of extreme positions. Not only basic knowledge but the ability to think critically are required to understand the factual errors (as distinct from differences of opinion) that generally provide the foundation for policies at the far ends of the political spectrum.”

Susan Jacoby, The Age Of America Unreason: pp. 298

We assert that it is intellectual sloppiness, moral weakness, and worse to mistake this “centrism” for a “stance” or position on any sort of issue.

But is it worse? Does it cosign, endorse, legitimize, in very fact give manifestation to, radical extremism? By putting all claims on some sort of “equal ground?”

It is far beyond sloppiness and weakness to mistake this for an ethos or creed. This is a comprehensive tautological error. It is the absence of any such things.

“Most” of us are not “somewhere in the center.” “Most” of us are chickenshit, or lazy.

 We ask: Are there solid, substantial, reasoned and reasonable policy positions, ethically supported and credible, somewhere around the region of space we fondly and fuzzily call “the Center?”

Centrism may not really exist. Moderation may be an illusion. What do you think?

(End)

“HOW SHOULD WE JUDGE THE POTPOURRI OF XENOPHOBIC, RACIST, AND HYPERNATIONALIST MOVEMENTS NOW IN THE NEWS?” William Brustein

“Could another racist, xenophobic party come to power today? The logic of the argument presented here leads me to answer yes: evil may be the horrifying outcome of rational politics. If average Germans had known in 1932 what they new in 1945 about the consequences, of Nazism, the Nazi Party would never have attracted a mass following. The Nazi Party skillfully cloaked its aims until it had achieved power. Many present and future demagogues may similarly masque their message of hate. It is unlikely that we can always detect evil before it reveals itself. How should we judge the potpourri of xenophobic, racist, and hypernationalist movements and parties that are now in the news?”

William Brustein, The Social Origins Of The Nazi Party, 1925-1933 (Yale University: New Haven 1996) pp 182

“To be sure, Darwin’s theory of evolution is imperfect,” Jones [Judge making ruling] concluded. “However, the fact that scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions.”

Susan Jacoby: The Age of American Unreason. Random House: New York, 2008. Pp. 29. (In reference to Court Finding Re. creationism in public education.)

We offer the following. Copernicus’ theory was a complete and sufficient explanation of the observable astronomical phenomena of the time, given his contemporary tools of observation and analytic methods. The cosmologies of pre-christian cultures in the Fertile Crescent found flaming chariots arcing through the sky to be complete and sufficient explanations for their observed experience. Today’s religious extremists would use the apparent incompleteness(?) of Darwin’s thought to reject the entire body of evidence proving that evolution takes place. They would not only reject it themselves, but would expel it from our teaching curriculum. They might settle for using it to “wedge” (remember Darwin’s “wedge” analogy?) creation “science” into our schools.

Copernicus’ theory, and those of, say, Newton and Einstein, have proved to be incomplete and insufficient explanations of our entire, observable reality, partly in light of the scientific “progress” they engendered. They are still valid. Needless to say, creationism provides a coherent, credible, complete and sufficient explanation for nothing –precisely nothing- in our observed reality. It is faith; as such, it stands proudly, precisely and solely on the fact that it bears no connection –none- to observed reality.

The Roman Church painfully and reluctantly acknowledged the validity of Copernican science. They even permit it to be taught in Italian schools! Newtonian mechanics and Einstein’s observations of special and general relativity seem to be accepted and acceptable science. (Or maybe not; maybe that stuff isn’t taught in our dumbed-down public education system but only in those high-brow egg-head intellectual schools up East, and is not presently targeted by the creationists.)

Einstein’s observations demanded further development of the theories (and observations) of Copernicus. Thusly, the “incompleteness” of Copernican astronomy is proved. (What business do these people have trafficking in “proofs,” anyway? Why do we bother to endure this tripe?) Before long, will this be used to thrust the geocentric “theory” of astronomy into our classrooms, alongside the heliocentric astronomical “theory?”

“Instead, I write in my notebook, Faith is belief in something you have absolutely no reason or right to believe in. Mentally, I list: faith in God, faith in the church, faith in your spouse, faith in the next sunrise, faith in motions of the stars themselves. Then I write: Faith is beyond thought. Faith is an absolute certainty of something that is so patently absurd you could never justify it to anyone who didn’t already have the same faith.”

Gerald N. Callahan, Ph.D: Faith, Madness and Spontaneous Human Combustion: What Immunology Can Teach Us About Self-Perception. New York: Berkeley Books, 2002. Pp 162

Conservative Ideals Become Crude Precepts: Jeffrey Scheuer

“The foundational principle of liberalism is the relative complexity of its intellectual and moral-political universe.
…Conversely, the quintessential feature and great polemical asset of conservatism is its relative simplicity.
…these simpler conservative ideals become crude precepts, which mask a host of uncritical assumptions and myths. Here are a few examples:

Democratic government is primarily a threat to individual freedoms, and not their guarantor…

Taxation is tantamount to theft, and public spending equivalent to waste.

Unfettered economic markets are just, and business enterprise uniformly serves the public interest.
…
Rights not expressly enumerated in the Constitution “do not exist.”
…
Dissent, especially in wartime, is unpatriotic.

“Special interests” are running the country or control the liberal media, but not the conservative agenda.

… They appeal at once to self-interest and to our thirst for simplicity: the politics of the self is simpler than that of self-and-others.”

Scheuer, Jeffrey: The Sound Bite Society: How Television Helps the Right and Hurts the Left. 2001: Routledge, New York. pp. 164-65

“Such condensation symbols are the hard currency of electronic communication, made to order for television sound bites, and for the simpler, more egocentric values and messages of the right. Precision, accuracy, and depth or complexity of meaning require that they be critically unpacked to reveal what they conceal, compress or obscure.”

Ibid. pp. 166

A Species of Evil: Sam Harris.

“It is time we realized that to presume knowledge where one has only pious hope is a species of evil.”

Harris, Sam: The End Of Faith. 2004: W.W. Norton, New York. pp. 225